City of the Beasts (10 page)

The photographers, caught by surprise, should have remembered they had cameras in their hands. Leblanc was fascinated by every movement of the unfortunate simian, which scampered up the wire looking for a way out, and of the cat, which, following the prey with its eyes, crouched and prepared to spring. Without thinking, Alex started running, stepping on his glasses, which were still on the ground, and grinding them to bits. He hurled himself at the door of the cage, intending to save both animals, the monkey from its certain death and the jaguar from its prison. When she saw her grandson opening the lock, Kate ran, too, but before she could reach him, two of Carías's employees already had him by his arms, and were struggling with him. Everything happened at once—so quickly that afterward, Alex could not remember the sequence of events. With one slash of its claws, the jaguar raked the monkey from the wire and with one snap of its terrible jaws killed it. Blood sprayed in every direction. In that same instant, César Santos pulled his pistol from his belt and fired a perfectly aimed shot to the jaguar's head. Alex felt the impact as if the bullet had struck
him
between the eyes, and he would have fallen backward if Carías's guards had not had a strong grip on him.

"What did you do, you bastard!" yelled the entrepreneur, whirling toward César Santos and pulling out his own pistol.

The guards let go of Alex, who stumbled and fell to the ground, in order to deal with the guide, but they did not dare touch him because he still had the smoking pistol in his hand.

"I set him free," César Santos replied with awesome serenity.

Mauro Carías fought to control himself. He realized he could not shoot Santos in front of the journalists and Leblanc.

"Hold it down!" Mauro Carías ordered the guards.

"He killed it! He killed it!" Leblanc babbled, red-faced with excitement. The death of the monkey, first, and then the cat, had driven him into a frenzy; he acted as if he were drunk.

"Don't concern yourself, Professor Leblanc. I can get all the animals I want. Forgive me, I fear that this was not a spectacle for soft hearts," said Carías.

Kate helped her grandson get to his feet, then took César Santos by the arm and started toward the exit before the situation could grow more violent. The guide allowed himself to be led by the writer, and they left, followed by Alex. Outside, they found Nadia with a terrified Borobá clinging to her waist.

Alex tried to explain to Nadia what had passed between the jaguar and him before Mauro Carías threw the monkey into the cage, but it was all jumbled together in his brain. The experience had been so real that he could have sworn that for a few minutes he was in a different world, a world with gleaming sand and six moons whirling through the firmament, a world where he and the jaguar blended into a single voice. Although he could not find the words to tell his friend what he had felt, she seemed to understand without the need to hear details.

"The jaguar recognized you because it is your totemic animal," she said. "We all have an animal spirit that accompanies us. It is like our soul. We don't all find our animal; usually it's only great warriors and shamans who do, but you discovered yours without looking. Your name is Jaguar," said Nadia.

"Jaguar?"

"Alexander is the name your parents gave you. Jaguar is your real name. But to use that name, you must be like a jaguar."

"And how is that? Cruel and bloody?" Alex asked, thinking of the beast's jaws as it tore the monkey apart in Carías's cage.

"Animals aren't cruel the way people are; they kill only to defend themselves, or when they are hungry."

"Do you have a totemic animal, too, Nadia?"

"Yes, but it hasn't been revealed to me yet. Finding your animal is less important for a woman, because we get our strength from the earth. We
are
nature," the girl said.

"How do you know all these things?" queried Alex, who by then was beginning to have faith in what the girl told him.

"Walimai taught me."

"The shaman is your friend?"

"Yes, Jaguar, but I haven't told anyone that I talk with Walimai, not even my papa."

"Why?"

"Because Walimai likes solitude. The only company he can bear is his wife's spirit. He shows up from time to time in a
shabono
to cure an illness or take part in a ceremony for the dead, but he never appears to the
nahab. "

"Nahab?"

"Foreigners."

"You're a foreigner, Nadia."

"Walimai says that I don't belong anywhere, that I'm not an Indian and not a foreigner, not a woman and not a spirit."

"What are you then?" asked Jaguar.

"I just
am
," the girl replied.

César Santos explained to the members of the expedition that they would go upriver by motorboat, traveling through Indian territory as far as the waterfalls of the Upper Orinoco. There they would set up camp and, if possible, clear enough ground to carve out a small landing field. He would go back to Santa María de la Lluvia to pick up his plane, which they would use for speedier contact with the village. He said that by then the new engine would have arrived, and it would simply be a matter of installing it. With the plane, they would be able to go to otherwise unreachable areas of the mountains where, according to the testimony of some Indians and adventurers, the mythological Beast might have its den.

"How does a gigantic creature climb up and down terrain that supposedly we can't manage?" asked Kate.

"We are going to find out," César Santos answered.

"How do the Indians get there without a small plane?" Kate insisted.

"They know the lay of the land," the guide said. "Indians can climb those gigantic palm trees that have the trunks covered with long spines. They can also scale the rock faces of the waterfalls, which are as smooth as mirrors."

The party spent a major part of the morning loading the boats. Professor Leblanc had brought more bundles than the photographers, including a supply of bottled water to use when he shaved because he was afraid of mercury-polluted water. It was futile for César Santos to remind him that they would be camping far upstream of the gold mines. At the guide's suggestion, Leblanc had hired Karakawe, the Indian who had been fanning him the night before, as his personal assistant to look after him for the rest of the trip. Leblanc explained that he had a bad back and could not carry anything at all.

From the first day of their adventure, Alexander had been responsible for his grandmother's things. That was one aspect of his duties, for which she was paying him a minimal amount, to be collected upon their return if he did his job well. Every day, Kate jotted down the hours her grandson worked and made him sign the page; that was how they kept track of what she owed. In a moment of candor, he had told her about destroying everything in his room. She did not consider that to be terribly grave, since it was her opinion that one needs very little in this world. She offered him a salary since he planned to replace what he had demolished. His grandmother traveled with three changes of cotton clothing, vodka, tobacco, shampoo, soap, insect repellent, a mosquito net, a blanket, paper, and a box of pencils—all of it in a single canvas bag. She also had an automatic camera, so ordinary that it had provoked hoots of laughter from the professional photographers, Timothy Bruce and Joel González. Kate let them laugh. Alex had even less clothing than his grandmother, plus a map and a couple of books. He had fastened his Swiss Army knife, his flute, and a compass to his belt. When César Santos saw the compass, he commented that it would not be any help in the jungle, since it was impossible to travel in a straight line.

"Forget the compass, son. Your best bet is to not lose sight of me," he counseled.

But Alex liked the idea of being able to locate north wherever he was. His watch, on the other hand, was useless, because Amazon time was different from the rest of the planet's; it was not measured in hours, but in dawns, tides, seasons, and rains.

The five soldiers Captain Ariosto had provided, and Matuwe, the Indian guide employed by César Santos, were well armed. Matuwe and Karakawe had adopted those names in their dealings with foreigners. Only family members and close friends could call them by their true names. They both had been very young when they left their tribes to be educated in the mission schools where they were converted to Christianity, but they had maintained contact with the other Indians. No one was better in orienting himself than Matuwe, who never needed a map to know where he was. Karakawe was considered to be a "city man," because he often traveled to Manaus and Caracas, and because, like many people from the city, he was suspicious by nature.

César Santos had organized the necessities for setting up camp: tents, food, cooking utensils, a battery-operated radio and lights, tools, nets for setting traps, machetes, knives, and a few metal, glass, and plastic trinkets to exchange with the Indians. At the last moment, Santos's daughter appeared with her little black monkey on one hip, Walimai's amulet around her neck, with no luggage but a cotton cardigan tied around her shoulders, and announced that she was ready to go. She had warned her father that she did not intend to stay with the nuns at the hospital in Santa María de la Lluvia, as she had before, because Mauro Carías was hanging around and she did not like the way he looked at her and tried to touch her. She was afraid of that man who "carried his heart in a tote." Professor Leblanc threw a tantrum. He had already objected strenuously to the inclusion of Kate's grandson, but since it was impossible to send him back to the United States, he had to tolerate him. Now, however, he was not about to allow the guide's daughter to tag along, not for any reason.

"This is not a kindergarten, it is a highly dangerous scientific expedition; the eyes of the world are on Ludovic Leblanc," he fumed.

When everyone ignored him, he refused to get on the boat. They could not leave without him; only the enormous prestige of his name guaranteed the backing of
International Geographic
, he reminded them. César Santos tried to convince Leblanc that his daughter went everywhere with him and that she would be no bother at all; just the opposite, she could be of great help because she spoke several Indian dialects. Leblanc was unbending. A half hour later, the temperature had climbed to one hundred degrees, moisture was dripping from every surface, and tempers were as hot as the thermometer. That was when Kate intervened.

"Like you, Professor, I have a bad back. I must have a personal assistant. I have hired Nadia Santos to carry my notebooks and fan me with a banana leaf."

Everyone burst out laughing. The girl climbed onto the boat with dignity and sat beside the writer. The monkey settled itself in her lap, and from there stuck out its tongue and made faces at Professor Leblanc, who also joined them, fiery red with indignation.

CHAPTER EIGHT
The Expedition

ONCE AGAIN THE group found itself proceeding upriver. This time there were thirteen adults and two children in two motorboats, both of which belonged to Mauro Carías, who had put them at Leblancs disposal.

Alex waited for an opportunity to talk to his grandmother in private about the strange conversation between Mauro Carías and Captain Ariosto, which Nadia had translated for him. Kate listened carefully and gave no sign that she didn't believe her grandson, as he had feared; on the contrary, she seemed very interested.

"I don't like that Carías," she said. "I wonder how he plans to exterminate the Indians."

"I don't know."

"The only thing we can do for the moment is wait and watch," the writer decided.

"Nadia said the same thing."

"That girl is smart; she should be my granddaughter, Alexander."

The trip upriver was much like the run between Manaus and Santa María de la Lluvia, although the landscape was different. By then, Alex had decided to follow Nadia's advice and instead of battling the mosquitoes and bathing himself in insect repellent, he let them attack him, overcoming the temptation to scratch. He also took off his boots when he saw that they were always wet, and when he found out that the leeches bit him as much as if he weren't wearing them. He hadn't noticed until his grandmother pointed to his feet: his socks were bloody. He pulled them off and saw the repulsive creatures clinging to his skin, swollen with blood.

"It doesn't hurt because they inject an anesthetic before they suck your blood," César Santos explained.

Then he taught Alex how to make the leeches drop off by burning them with a cigarette; that way the heads weren't left under the skin and you avoided the risk of infection. Santos's method was somewhat complicated for Alex since he didn't smoke, but a little warm tobacco from his grandmother's pipe had the same effect. It was easier to remove the leeches than to spend all his time trying to keep them off.

From the beginning, Alex had the impression that the tension among the adults of the expedition was almost visible; no one trusted anyone. He couldn't shake the feeling that he was being spied on, as if thousands of eyes were observing every move of the motorboats. He kept looking over his shoulder, but no one was following them on the river.